Book Log 2016 #8: The Last Bookaneer by Matthew Pearl

In the 19th century, when copyright law was lax and manuscripts still had to be sent out in hard copy, there was a thriving trade in stolen works, where bookaneers (a kind of literary pirate) would try to steal books so their employers could publish them before the official copies hit the street. As laws became tighter the practice faded away.

This novel follows one of the great bookaneers as he attempts one last, great score, traveling halfway across the world to steal what looks like the final work of Robert Louis Stevenson. Along the way he has to fight of his remaining rivals and deal with the political situation on Samoa (as local differences are stoked by Britain and Germany's rivalry) in the hopes of getting his hands on the book.

I didn't like this novel as much as Pearl's previous ones, for reasons I can't quite quantify (having read the book about eight months ago). Which isn't to say it's a bad book - I didn't know much about bookaneering before reading it, for example - but maybe not as much to my taste as the earlier novels. Still very much worth reading, though.